In this revised and expanded second edition of Harmonizing Sentiments: The Declaration of Independence and the Jeffersonian Idea of Self-Government, the original themes of American independence and the meaning of the pursuit of happiness have been updated in light of current controversies among historians surrounding the interpretation of the Revolution and questions of slavery and race in late eighteenth-century imperial debates. This new edition develops more thoroughly the subs...

Historians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and individual rights matter in the making of history. History written in the classical liberal tradition emerged largely in the nineteenth century, when the field of history was first professionalized in Europe and the Americas. Professional historical research was then imbued with liberal values, which included rigorous attention to the sources, historicist suspicion of an ultimate mover, an hon...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the Revolution comes “an elegant, concise, and lucid summary of the Revolution’s origins, the war itself, and the social and political changes wrought by the struggle for American independence” (The Wall Street Journal).“This slim book tells a big story: one that invites the reader to contemplate the relationships between liberty, power, rights...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers.

**A New York Times bestseller!"Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best." —The Philadelphia Inquirer**In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, What made these men great, and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter.The life of each—Washing...

**“Exceptional... a remarkable study of the key chapter of American history and its ongoing influence on American character.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Founding Era reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the American Revolution remains so essential to our identity and culture.**For Gordon S. Wood, the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American id...

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 181...

Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified.Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress i...

Why the American Founding Father feared the political power of the rich―and how his ideas illuminate today's debates about inequality and its consequences."A most timely, valuable, and enlightening book. It shows conclusively that Adams was one of the sharpest critics of oligarchy among the American founders and, indeed, in the history of political thought. The book will generate much-needed discussion in political thought, American political studies, and c...

A revised version of an American history classic, exploring the people and culture of the Revolutionary era that birthed the nation.When The American Revolution was first published in 1985, it was praised as the first synthesis of the Revolutionary War to use the new social history. Bancroft Prize-winning professor of history Edward Countryman offered a balanced view of how the Revolution was made by a variety of groups—ordinary farmers as well as lawyers,...

“One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.” — New York Times Book Review“During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.” — William and Mary Quarterly“[A] brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in the R...

"No better brief chronological introduction to the period can be found." — Wilson QuarterlyIn The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89, Edmund S. Morgan shows how the challenge of British taxation started Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom, and eventually led to the Revolution. By demonstrating that the founding fathers' political philosophy was not grounded in theory, but rather grew out of their own immediate n...